


Curveballs

by Dusty_Forgotten (DustyForgotten)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkwardness, Inspired by Music, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 06:21:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12721263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustyForgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: Of all the apartments in all the towns in all the world, and he had to live with your ex-boyfriend.





	Curveballs

Out of everyone in the bar, you just had to go for the Ken doll  _ Sons of Anarchy _ wannabe.

Out of everyone in the state, his roommate  _ had _ to be your ex-boyfriend.

Call it karma; Cas certainly will.

“What do you  _ mean _ your ex?” Mattel-man gapes.

Castiel, beautiful as the day he left you, introduces you like a neighbour’s nephew: as if he has no relation. “Dean, meet Fergus.”

And that’s all he has to say, is your name, because he’s talked about you before. Told Dean all about the asshole accountant who thought he could be a CFO if he worked himself half to death first.

He glares at you with those gorgeous green eyes, looking more outlaw than action figure. “ _ Fergus? _ You told me your name was Crowley.”

You shrug; the situation can’t get much worse. “To _ may _ to, to _ mah _ to.”

“I suppose he told you he’s English as well?” he asks Dean, like you aren’t even in the room.

Pretty boy (and Dean  _ is _ pretty, though maybe not the most deserving in the room of that title) whirls on you like you grabbed his ass. Hell, he didn’t react this grandiosely when you did, back at the bar. “You’re faking the accent?”

“I’m not faking the bloody accent!”

Castiel ignores you. “He’s Scottish.”

“I was raised in London—  I spent the last two and a half years in London!”

“I think you’re lying,” he accuses calmly.

“I think you’re jealous,” you retort.

“I need a drink!” Dean speaks up.

“Hear, hear,” you agree, at the same time as Castiel’s, “I concur.” You lock eyes, and while you can’t decide if you’re offended or flattered, he just looks unreadable. The same damn mystery you fell in love with, four years back.

Dean splits a half-empty bottle of Jack between two lowball glasses, and sloshes what’s left down his gullet. He slides one to either corner of the kitchen table, playing mediator along with bartender. You feel better with a drink in your hand.

Cas just lays his hand over his glass, like a woman in a crowded club, and stares as you sip. 

“Spit it out,” you dare.

“You went to London?” he questions, but it sounds like a confession.

“Thought you didn’t believe me.”

He picks his drink up, finally. “If you were lying, you’d try harder to convince me.”

You scoff, and sip, turning around because you’re mirroring him. Dean’s stuffed his nose in the fridge, and comes out with a beer.

“It’s quite a coincidence, you left the country shortly after I left you.”

“Just a bloody fucking coinkydink!” you snap back, throw back your whiskey, and smack the glass on the table. The sound is mocked by a beer bottle tapping the wood as Dean sets it down behind you, and yanks out the chairs at either end of the table. Cas sits, and like a damn sheep, you do too. Situation slightly diffused, Dean opens another bottle for himself. You can’t stand (sit?) to look at the man across from you, so you focus instead on the sparse apartment. Dean is one of few people on this earth with worse interior decorating sense than Castiel, it seems; there’s a sword mounted on the wall, like a friggin’ teenager that draws the anarchy A on all his schoolwork. Cas is staring. You don’t hide from it. “What!?”

“I didn’t realize I had... affected you, so deeply.”

_ “Affected” _ he says, ruefully. Oh yeah, he  _ affected _ you, with his perfect body and his stupid grin and his ability to not call you for weeks, then pick up where he left off: lunch here, tumble there, murmuring you’re the light of his life with your face between his hands at four in the afternoon. Then he’s gone again.

And one day, he never came back.

You hate Coor’s. You drink it anyway.  “Don’t flatter yourself, darling. I was glad to be free.” 

“I’m glad to hear it.” He picks up the whiskey, looks at it. Sets it down. “You doing alright?”

“Never better.” It’s eight pm and you’re not sloshed yet; that’s new.

“Work well?”

“Dandy.” Each day you more seriously consider stabbing someone with a ballpoint.

“Seeing anyone?”

“Loads.” Once, and never again.

“Are you lying?”

“As always.” 

He looks down at his drink, and slides it across the table. Vaguely reminds you of  _ Lady and the Tramp _ . You nudge it back, and the glass sits, whiskey swishing, in the centre of the table.

That’s enough self-loathing. “Dean-o, you’ve made yourself scarce.”

He sneers, scrunching the whole side of his face as he leans over the kitchenette island. “I just wanted to get laid, man, I didn’t shave to listen to you two bitch about the good ol’ days.”

Still fighting dirty, you reply, “You don’t bitch about something good. I wasn’t expecting to run into Cas, here, but he doesn’t change anything. Do you, darling?”

He glances unresponsively from you to Dean, flinches a face.

“Yeah, not really into screwin’ my roommate’s ex. Feels like incest.”

“Wasn’t talking to you, love.” Your smug smile, still fixed on Castiel, falls to impassive. He really does wear his emotions, if you look close enough. Out of practice, but you’ve had more than anyone. “But you  _ do _ change things. Don’t you?”

Silence. You narrow your eyes, smile knowingly, own the dining chair a little less formally. “Did you miss me?”

“Yes.” Simple, plain. Immediate. 

You want him. (Anti) Christ, you want him: his feather-soft hair, and Hope Diamond eyes, and his endless, boundless adoration.

“You done havin’ a moment? ‘Cause I’m done.”

Castiel watches him while he speaks, flinches his brows together and lets his eyes slide self-consciously to his glass. Look at that flush. Oh, he’s in bloody love.

And it’s not with you.

“You know,” you speak up, but watch Cas for his reaction, because it’s going to be a good one, “repressing your emotions doesn’t make you more of a man.”

It takes Dean a second to realize you’re talking to him; you’re too busy drinking in the furrow of Cas’s brows, how dare you speak to his boyfriend like that. “Yeah? And, and you’re...” It takes him a moment, and Cas takes his drink, just the smallest sip. Ken doll’s rubbing off on him. “Short.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious, but it seems you’re slacking.”

Castiel’s eyes go wide, pleading, but you’re an asshole. He should know that.

“Your roommate wants the Winchester special, extra monogamy.”

This heat comes into his eyes, like he’s trying to evaporate you in his gaze alone. Dean’s still trying to figure it out. “You. Angel. Horizontal tango. Come on, I have never experienced a room with more sexual tension, and that figure consistently spikes when I walk in.”

Across from you, Cas’s lips part to bare teeth.

“I—  _ what? _ ” Dean replies articulately.

“I love you.”

That’s Cas, cutting in. Sick of your shit, biting the bullet. Didn’t see that coming— but around him, you never know. Dean’s a picture, light playing off his eyes and this would absolutely be a romcom climax, were you not here. Actually, it wouldn’t have happened without you. 

Well, this is a disaster.

“But I don’t want monogamy.”

All eyes on Cas, blown wide in shock. Endearingly tactless; like the truth is more important than how he puts it. It always was. If you just told him— admitted you were redirecting stress onto the only purely pleasant thing in your life, saw a damn therapist before you stopped having a choice about it,  _ apologized _ — maybe you wouldn’t have seen  _ The Nutcracker _ with an empty seat, but made fun of ballet until his smothered laughter had you kicked out of the theatre, instead of leaving before the intermission. Admire the holiday lights on a cold walk to the parking garage, while he hummed  _ A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square _ .

Maybe you could have called him from Berkeley Square, instead of that overpaid complaint centre you called a counselor.

“I’m a queer individual—”

“Understatement of the century,” you can’t help but mutter.

A frown touches his face, but he keeps talking. “I am attracted to people regardless of how they present corporeally, I have never grasped the concept of gender, and I believe monogamy is a social construct.”

“Because it is.”

You spare Dean a glance of approval, quickly retorting, “Expectation of sexual fidelity is the cause of one-hundred percent of affairs.”

Ever-logical Castiel, “I propose a polyamorous triad.”

“Seconded,” you agree, choking down a mouthful of Coor’s as quickly as humanly possible, “and not just because I’m a greedy bastard that wants the both of you.”

You and Cas catch gazes, and while his shift of focus to the final man in the room is hopefully shy, yours is oily as petroleum-based pomade. “No pressure, love.”

Dean gets more sun than Cas ever has, so it’s harder to see when the colour rushes his face, but his grin is dopey as all hell. You rise from the assigned seating, and make your way around the far side of the table to places your hands on Castiel’s shoulder. He relaxes into every touch, even now, like a rehabilitated abuse victim. “Look at that flush, Cas,” you direct, because his eyes have drifted shut, “what do you think?”

Bert and Ernie have a look at each other, in a way that holds too long and gets a bit awkward for everyone else in the room, and Castiel says, “I’m glad I stayed in tonight.”


End file.
